Taltos (58 page)

“I’ll come round for you with the umbrella,” she said, slamming the door behind her before he could say they should wait till the rain slacked off, and then his door flew open and he had no choice but to pick up this ice chest like a cradle.

“Here, put the towel over it, little guy will get wet!” Mary Jane said. “Now run for the boat.”

“I will walk, thank you,” he said. “If you’ll just kindly lead the way, Miss Mayfair!”

“Don’t let him fall.”

“I beg your pardon! I delivered babies in Picayune, Mississippi, for thirty-eight years before I ever came down to this godforsaken country.”

And just why did I come? he thought to himself as he had a thousand times, especially when his new little wife, Eileen, born and raised in Napoleonville, wasn’t around to remind him.

Lord in heaven, it was a great big heavy aluminum pirogue, and it didn’t have a motor! But there was the house, all right, the entire thing the color of driftwood, with the purple wisteria completely wrapped around the capitals of those upstairs columns, and making its way for the balusters. At least the tangle of trees was so thick in this part of the jungle that he was almost dry for a moment. A tunnel of green went up to the tilting front porch. Lights on upstairs, well, that was a relief. If he had had to see his way around this place by kerosene lamp, he would have gone crazy. Maybe he was already going crazy, crossing this stretch of duckweed slop with this crazy young woman, and the place about to sink any minute.

“That’s what’s going to happen,” Eileen had said. “One morning we’ll drive by there, and there won’t be any house,
whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel, will have sunk into the swamp, you mark my words, it’s a sin, anybody living like that.”

Carrying the ice chest and its quiet little contents with one hand, he managed to get into the shallow boat, thrilled to discover that it was full of about two inches of water. “This is going to sink, you should have emptied it out.” His shoes filled up to the ankles immediately. Why had he agreed to come out here? And Eileen would have to know every last detail.

“It’s not going to sink, this is a sissy rain,” said Mary Jane Mayfair, shoving on her long pole. “Now hang on, please, and don’t let the baby get wet.”

The girl was past all patience. Where he came from, nobody talked to a doctor like that! The baby was just fine under the towels, and pissing up a storm for a newborn.

Lo and behold, they were gliding right over the front porch of this dilapidated wreck and into the open doorway.

“My God, this is like a cave!” he declared. “How in the world did a woman give birth in this place? Will you look at that. There are books in there on the top shelf of that bookcase, right above the water.”

“Well, nobody was here when the water came in,” said Mary Jane, straining as she pushed on the pole.

He could hear the
thonk-thonk
of it hitting the floorboards beneath them.

“And I guess lots of things are still floating around in the parlor. Besides, Mona Mayfair didn’t have her baby down here, she had it upstairs. Women don’t have their babies in the front room, even if it isn’t underwater.”

The boat collided with the steps, tossing him violently to the left, so that he had to grab the slimy wet banister. He leapt out, immediately stamping both his feet to make sure the steps weren’t going to sink under him.

A warm flood of light came from upstairs, and he could hear, over the hiss and roar of the rain, another sound, very fast,
clickety, clickety, clickety
. He knew that sound. And with it, a woman’s voice humming. Kind of pretty.

“Why doesn’t this stairway just float loose from the wall?” he asked. He started up, the ice-chest cradle beginning
to feel like a sack of rocks to him. “Why doesn’t this whole place just disintegrate?”

“Well, in a way, I guess it is,” said Mary Jane, “only it’s taking a couple hundred years, you know???” She went thumping up the steps in front of him, pushing right in his way as she hit the second-floor hall, and then turning around and saying, “You come with me, we got to go up to the attic.”

But where was that
clickety, clickety, clickety
coming from? He could hear somebody humming, too. But she didn’t even give him a chance to look around, rushing him to the attic steps.

And then he saw old Granny Mayfair at the very top in her flowered flannel gown, waving her little hand at him.

“Hey, there, Dr. Jack. How’s my handsome boy? Come give me a kiss. Surely am glad to see you.”

“Glad to see you too, Grandma,” he said coming up, though Mary Jane once again shoved right past him, with the firm admonition that he was to hold tight to the baby. Four more steps and he’d be glad to set this bundle down. How come he was the one who’d wound up carrying it, anyway?

At last he reached the warm, dry air of the attic, the little old lady standing on tiptoe to press her lips to his cheeks. He did love Grandma Mayfair, he had to admit that much.

“How you doing, Grandma, you taking all your pills?” he asked.

Mary Jane picked up the ice chest as soon as he set it down, and ran off with it. This wasn’t such a bad place, this attic; it was strung with electric lights, and clean clothes hanging on the lines with wooden clothespins. Lots of comfortable old furniture scattered around, and it didn’t smell too much like mold; on the contrary, it smelled like flowers.

“What is that ‘clickety-clickety’ sound I’m hearing on the second floor down there?” he asked as Grandma Mayfair took his arm.

“You just come in here, Dr. Jack, and do what you got to do, and then you fill out that baby’s birth certificate. We don’t want any problems with the registration of this baby’s birth, did I ever tell you about the problems when I didn’t register Yancy Mayfair for two months after he was born,
and you wouldn’t believe the trouble I got into with the city hall and them telling me that …”

“And you delivered this little tyke, did you, Granny?” he asked, patting her hand. His nurses had warned him the first time she came in that it was best not to wait till she finished her stories, because she didn’t. She’d been at his office the second day he opened up, saying none of the other doctors in this town were ever going to touch her again. Now that was a story!

“Sure did, Doctor.”

“The mama’s over there,” said Mary Jane, pointing to the side gable of the attic, all draped in unbleached mosquito netting as if it were a tent with its peaked roof, and the distant glowing rectangle of the rain-flooded window at the end of it.

Almost pretty, the way it looked. There was an oil lamp burning inside, he could smell it, and see the warm glow in the smoky glass shade. The bed was big, piled with quilts and coverlets. It made him sad, suddenly, to think of his own grandmother years and years ago, and beds like that, so heavy with quilts you couldn’t move your toes, and how warm it had been underneath on cold mornings in Carriere, Mississippi.

He lifted the long, thin veils and lowered his head just a little as he stepped under the spine of the gable. The cypress boards were bare here, and dark brownish red and clean. Not a leak anywhere, though the rainy window sent a wash of rippling light over everything.

The red-haired girl lay snug in the bed, half asleep, her eyes sunken and the skin around them frighteningly dark, her lips cracked as she took her breaths with obvious effort.

“This young woman should be in a hospital.”

“She’s worn out, Doctor, you would be too,” said Mary Jane, with her smart tongue. “Why don’t you get this over with, so she can get some rest now?”

At least the bed was clean, cleaner than that makeshift bassinet. The girl lay nestled in fresh sheets, and wearing a fancy white shirt trimmed in old-fashioned lace, with little pearl buttons. Her hair was just about the reddest he’d ever seen, and long and full and brushed out on the pillow. The
baby’s might be red like that someday, but right now it was a bit paler.

And speaking of the baby, it was making a sound at last in its little ice-chest bed, thank God. He was beginning to worry about it. Granny Mayfair snatched it up into her arms, and he could tell from the way she lifted it that the baby was in fine hands, though who wanted to think of a woman that age in charge of everything? Look at this girl in the bed. She wasn’t even as old as Mary Jane.

He drew closer, went down with effort on his knees, since there was nothing else to do, and he laid his hand on the mother’s forehead. Slowly her eyes opened, and surprised him with their deep green color. This was a child herself, should never have had a baby!

“You all right, honey?” he asked.

“Yes, Doctor,” she said in a bright, clear voice. “Would you fill out the papers, please, for my baby?”

“You know perfectly well that you should—”

“Doctor, the baby’s born,” she said. She wasn’t from around here. “I’m not bleeding anymore. I’m not going anywhere. As a matter of fact, I am fine, better than I expected.”

The flesh beneath her fingernails was nice and pink. Her pulse was normal. Her breasts were huge. And there was a big jug of milk, only half drunk, by the bed. Well, that was good for her.

Intelligent girl, sure of herself, and well bred, he thought, not country.

“You two leave us alone now,” he said to Mary Jane and the old woman, who hovered right at his shoulders like two giant angels, the little baby whining just a little, like it had just discovered again that it was alive and wasn’t sure it liked it. “Go over there so I can examine this child, and make sure she’s not hemorrhaging.”

“Doctor, I took care of that child,” said Granny gently. “Now do you think I would let her lie there if she was hemorrhaging?” But she went away, bouncing the baby in her arms, pretty vigorously, he thought, for a newborn.

He thought sure the little mother was going to put up a fuss, too, but she didn’t.

There was nothing to do but hold this oil lamp himself, if he wanted to make sure everything was all right. This was hardly going to be a thorough examination.

She sat up against the pillows, her red hair mussed and tangled around her white face, and let him turn back the thick layer of covers. Everything nice and clean, he had to hand it to them. She was immaculate, as though she’d soaked in the tub, if such a thing was possible, and they had laid a layer of white towels beneath her. Hardly any discharge at all now. But she was the mother, all right. Badly bruised from the birth. Her white nightgown was spotless.

Why in the world didn’t they clean up the little one like that, for God’s sake? Three women, and they didn’t want to play dolls enough to change that baby’s blankets?

“Just lie back now, honey,” he said to the mother. “The baby didn’t tear you, I can see that, but it would have been a damned sight easier for you if it had. Next time, how about trying the hospital?”

“Sure, why not?” she said in a drowsy voice, and then gave him just a little bit of a laugh. “I’ll be all right.” Very ladylike. She’d never be a child again now, he thought, pint-sized though she was, and just wait till this story got around town, though he wasn’t about to tell Eileen one word of it.

“I told you she was fine, didn’t I?” asked Granny, pushing aside the netting now, the baby crying a little against her shoulder. The mother didn’t even look at the baby.

Probably had enough of it for the moment, he thought. Probably resting while she could.

“All right, all right,” he said, smoothing the cover back. “But if she starts to bleed, if she starts running a fever, you get her down into that limousine of yours and get her into Napoleonville! You go straight on in to the hospital.”

“Sure thing, Dr. Jack, glad you could come,” said Mary Jane. And she took his hand and led him out of the little tent enclosure, away from the bed.

“Thank you, Doctor,” said the red-haired girl, softly. “Will you write it all out, please? The date of birth and all, and let them sign it as witnesses?”

“Got a wooden table for you to write on right here,” said Mary Jane. She pointed to a small makeshift desk of two pine boards laid over two stacks of old wooden Coke bottle crates. It had been a long time since he’d seen Coke crates like that, the kind they used to use for the little bottles that used to cost a nickel. Figured she could probably sell them at a flea market these days to a collector. Lots of things around here she could sell. He spied the old gas sconce on the wall just above him.

It broke his back to lean over and write like this, but it wasn’t worth complaining about. He took out his pen. Mary Jane reached up and tipped the naked light bulb towards him.

There came that sound from downstairs,
clickety-clickety-clickety
. And then a whirring sound. He knew those noises.

“What is that sound?” he asked. “Now let’s see here, mother’s name, please?”

“Mona Mayfair.”

“Father’s name?”

“Michael Curry.”

“Lawfully wedded husband and wife.”

“No. Just skip that sort of thing, would you?”

He shook his head. “Born last night, you said?”

“Ten minutes after two this morning. Delivered by Dolly Jean Mayfair and Mary Jane Mayfair. Fontevrault. You know how to spell it?”

He nodded. “Baby’s name?”

“Morrigan Mayfair.”

“Morrigan, never heard of the name Morrigan. That a saint’s name, Morrigan?”

“Spell it for him, Mary Jane,” the mother said, her voice very low, from inside the enclosure. “Two
r
’s, Doctor.”

“I can spell it, honey,” he said. He sang out the letters for her final approval.

“Now, I didn’t get a weight….”

“Eight pounds nine ounces,” said Granny, who was walking the baby back and forth, patting it as it lay on her shoulder. “I weighed it on the kitchen scale. Height, regular!”

He shook his head again. He quickly filled in the rest,
made a hasty copy on the second form. What was the point of saying anything further to them?

A glimmer of lightning flashed in all the gables, north and south and east and west, and then left the big room in a cozy, shadowy darkness. The rain teemed softly on the roof.

“Okay, I’m leaving you this copy,” he said, putting the certificate in Mary Jane’s hand, “and I’m taking this one to mail it into the parish from my office. In a couple of weeks you’ll get the official registration of your baby. Now, you should go ahead and try to nurse that child a little, you don’t have any milk yet, but what you have is colostrum and that …”